A Study Of Effectiveness Of Scaffolding Instruction Model In English Writing Teaching For Higher Vocational College

On the basis of Vygotsky's Sociocultural Theory,the Zone of Proximal Development concept,the purpose of this thesis is to examine the effects of scaffolding instruction model on non-English majors' writing ability in higher vocational college.Through the application of scaffolding instruction model,the instruction of English writing in higher vocational college has broken the traditional teaching methods,and students' cognitive abilities have gotten continuous development with the help of the teacher and capable peers.Therefore,this thesis starts from the practical teaching and intends to explore the following three questions through empirical study:1.Is the scaffolding instruction model effective in improving students' English writing ability and changing their learning style in higher vocational college?2.Can the scaffolding instruction model arouse students' interest and improve students' confidence in English writing in higher vocational college?3.Can the scaffolding instruction model reduce the dispersion of students' achievement in English writing and make their scores' distribution more even after a term's learning in higher vocational college?There were 90 students of Xi'an Railway Technician Institute participating in the experiment,and they were divided into two classes,the experimental class and the control class,in which each class has 45 students.Scaffolding instruction model was used in the experimental class,and the traditional method was still used in the control class.Every week,there were four writing lessons that were taught in the two classes by the same teacher,and it lasted for 16 weeks.The experiment began on September 1st,2017.The software SPSS 18.0 was used to analyze the data which was collected when the experiment was finished.The data included the experimental class' questionnaire,the two classes' pretest and post-test,and the face-to-face interview of eight extracted students from the experimental class,which were all used to prove the effectiveness of the model.The following conclusions are drawn for the experimental results: First,scaffolding instruction model is effective,which is beneficial to improve students' English writing ability and change students' English learning style.Second,scaffolding instruction model is helpful to arouse students' interest and improve their confidence in writing.Third,scaffolding instruction model can improve students' writing score,reduce the dispersion,and make the score distribution more even.Therefore,to meet the needs of the social development and improve students' English writing level of the higher vocational college,it is an inevitable trend of reform in education to apply the Scaffolding teaching model to the teaching of English writing in the higher vocational college.